>>8011296A lot of companies gave up on art direction in favor of just making everything as realistic as possible. Back then you had to think about how you lit, modelled and textured objects to make sure your game didn't look like ass, now companies just cram in more and more polygons to make things realistic and hope that it looks good.
The average gamer doesn't really help when it comes to this issue because anytime a triple A companies comes out with a game and there is a part that doesn't look super realistic its relentlessly mocked (The people posting pictures of the starfield NPCs are an example of this). This mockery fuels the cycle which continues to make games peruse aimless realism.
